Technology Help for the Classroom

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As I was researching ways to help students with learning disabilities I was able to find information on assistive technology (AT). “AT for kids with learning disabilities is defined as any device, piece of equipment or system that helps bypass, work around or compensate for an individual’s specific learning deficits.The use of technology to enhance learning is an effective approach for many children. Additionally, students with LD often experience greater success when they are allowed to use their abilities (strengths) to work around their disabilities (challenges). AT tools combine the best of both of these practices.” (greatschools.org)

The following websites I’ve found help discuss Assistive Technology for students with learning disabilities and give resources for teachers to help their students.

As the standards have just recently changed for Kentucky teachers are struggling to get used to the new standards or having trouble understanding them. Technology gives us many great sources especially through the web in order to help teachers with the standards. While researching resources for common core and technology I was able to find two great websites that I found to be incredibly useful when helping teachers with the common core that also involve technology.

This site gives 50 different web resources that teachers can use. It is a very organized blog that gives different sites into sections. It gives other blogs to look at, tools, developments, and much more!

I also wanted to mention that there is an iPhone app on my phone that you can get for both your iPhone and iPad that lists all of the common core standards. I find it very handy when I’m writing lessons and want to quickly look up a standard. You can purchase it on itunes, www.apple.com/itunes/ .

Kentucky schools have also began implementing CIITS, Continuous Instruction Improvement Technology System. This program allows teachers to plan their lessons and also includes the common core standards.

If you have any helpful resources that you know please list them in the comment box, I would love to read your ideas or suggestions!!

In order for technology to thrive within our schools it will take strong leaders within the schools to help guide technology integration in the classrooms. It is critical that we as teachers step out of our comfort zone if need be to help support technology integration in order to help reach our digital students. Over time we hope that the leadership through teachers supporting technology within classrooms will help fill the gap between teachers and students. A few websites concerning leadership and technology integration can be found at:

As we all know our world has changed significantly thanks to technology, so what does this mean for the way in which we prepare assessments for our students? Students’ skills have now become more about the process instead of the content. We as teachers need to change our mindset and focus on how students got there instead of just the solution. I was able to find a couple of websites that I found helpful pertaining to technological ways we can assess our students, take a look…

Is an awesome PDF file that breaks down how you can use technology to assess students. Although it’s quite long its definitely something teachers can find helpful when it comes to finding effective ways to use technology as an assessment to evaluate student learning.

Our world is now communicating visually instead of strictly through text. This has its pro’s and con’s. Over time new technology has helped play a huge role in this discovery. The web has played one of the biggest parts in this new communication; it has allowed for more graphics to be shown rather than just text. A study has been shown that 1/3 of our brains is devoted to processing images where as less than that makes us processing text. So what’s the down fall you may ask? Traditional reading is on the decline. Students no longer feel that reading for entertainment is important when they have all these other things competing with it. We as educators are going to have to find new fun ways to bring the love back into reading again before it ceases to exist but we also must remember to teach our students visually.

A few good websites that relate to communicating visually can be found at:

Collaboration is becoming more important in the working world today. However, collaboration isn’t necessarily the same as it used to be. In order for us to now prepare our students for the working world we have to rely on teaching them more technology based ways to incorporate technology. Students have to be able to work with others even when they aren’t in the same place to work on the project. In my technology reading this week it stated that, “Students need to learn communication skills required to make a virtual work group function.” and “They must learn how to plan joint work, to negotiate the distribution of work between members, and to resolve conflicts.” (pg 109, Understanding the Digital Generation, Jukes, McCain, Crockett) We as educators also must learn to do this as well so that we can help our students.

One of the most important tools to our students today, especially to our middle and high schools students, is you guessed it the cell phone. However, there has been a lot of controversy about whether this tools should be allowed in schools. Cell phones allow for a great window of opportunity to our students, they allow them to communicate and find information quickly. These are a 21st century tool that they will be able to use well passed their school days and into their careers. Although teachers worry about students doing things on their phones during class that are inappropriate, why not have them do things on their phones that relate to class. Programs now allow for students to participate in quizzes and polls simply by texting the answer to a certain number. There are great possibilities when it comes to cell phone use we as teachers just need to find ways that work for both us and our students.

I was able to find quite a few websites that pertain to cell phone usage in schools. They’re pretty cool, check them out if you have a chance!

As I have mentioned in previous posts about us as teachers primarily teaching towards the test and having our own ways of teaching to our preference but we have to keep in mind is this type of teaching really helping our students? We know that simply having students memorize material isn’t cutting it. If we take a look at the “Learning Cone” we find that talking at our students is one of the worst approaches we as educators can use. We need to allow our students to discover while they are learning this is how we reach them, by finding ways to relate to the student. We need to become more of a facilitator of learning, guiding our students instead of telling them.